Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/22

terrible vengeances on the others—his father and some of his father’s hard-eyed, full-lipped companions.

He stowed himself on board a south-bound petite vitesse and was soon discovered. How he managed to stay on he never remembered; he was too excited at the time. But the conductor was good-natured, and Tony had pretty ways when he chose, which was seldom except when he had an end in view. He looked such a child too, being small and slight for his age, with big grey eyes that made a strange contrast to his dark skin.

He got to Marseilles by slow stages (the first train only went as far as Châteauroux) at the cost of three francs ten. He had begged at many doors for food and shelter, always beginning by a request for work, much more convincing than is usual. But that no one had given him, though food and a shake-down in outhouses were generally easy to get. He was sometimes offered his board and lodging in exchange for his work, which was generous enough, but he never accepted. As he said to himself, you never knew what would come of it. He wanted to feel free to go on.

He reached Marseilles after two more stolen rides in trains. He knew the town well—the hotel-and-mainstreet-aspect of it—but now it seemed more interesting than it ever had before. He was intoxicated with the joy of tramping, but very much at a loose end. After two days’ knocking about the vivid, noisy docks, living more from hand to mouth than he ever had before in his haphazard little life, he was taken on board a fruit-boat, the Deux-Frères-Chambasse, one of those that wander all round the Mediterranean picking up varied cargoes of fruit that is railed afterwards to Paris and even to London.

Achille Chambasse, skipper and part-owner, wanted a mousse and liked Tony, small as he undoubtedly was. A vrai gars—a boy that could hold his tongue! That child